His point was that getting a copy of a piece of music doesn't deprive anyone along the supply chain of anything.

It's a semantic argument about what "steal" means. Namely, does it mean that you've taken something for free that someone wants you to pay for, or does it mean depriving someone of their property. If it's the former, illegal downloading of MP3s is stealing. If it's the latter, it's not. Then you can get into an argument about whether getting it for free is depriving the supplier of the cash they would normally have gotten for that service and if the consumer would have just not bothered if it wasn't free to him.

Of course, the publisher wants you to pay $1 for any given piece of music, whereas allofmp3 will sell it to you for much less than that. It seems to be legal (especially for Russian citizens), but it still might be considered stealing by the publisher, and by, my first definition above, is very close to it.

But that's all okay because people who want to download it for free are going to continue to do so regardless of any of these issues. And the publishers trying so hard to hang onto their status quo are going to try to prevent them, regardless of any of these definitions. On both sides, people are much more likely to speak in platitudes, gross generalizations, and inept metaphors than actually speak to the actual issues involved. And that makes those of us in the middle of the issue both irritated and, somehow, incapable of not using those same methods.

And the extreme stances both sides take tend to push moderates to one side or the other, like the repulsion of a strong magnet. While it's somewhat true that this is just a new argument for people who have always downloaded music without paying for it, every time the music industry goes on the offensive, it just pushes the moderates who would like more reasonable access to their music closer and closer to the freeloaders. Especially measures that they take to prevent people who have paid for the music to listen to it in the manner they desire, starting with the warning logos, to the copy protection, to the rootkits. All the while apparently ignoring the real issue of organized criminals making bootlegs to sell on the street corners.

It's really time someone sat down and had an honest discussion about the issues involved instead of just sniping at each other and trying to blur the issues.